Setting Up Quake Gold and Quake Platinum on PC

Quake Gold and Quake Platinum, developed by Titanium Studios, are two versions of the original Quake which were released on the Sega Dreamcast in Russia in 2000 and 2001 respectively.

Not only were these games significant for porting Quake to the Dreamcast console, but they also include re-developed levels. Some people may prefer these levels to those of the original levels from the 1996 base game.

For anyone interested in playing these levels on modern hardware, there's great news: they work well on the PC version of Quake! However, some work is needed updating or replacing parts of the original Quake files to make everything run correctly and look as lovely as possible.

The in-game text in these releases has been translated to Russian. However, even for those who cannot read Russian, the gameplay isn't affected by this and the text is generally just stating the obvious, especially if you have played the base Quake game before. It should not hinder your ability to enjoy these versions of the game.

This guide will help users get the latest community patches and graphics updates installed for Quake and then will instruct users how to replace the original game's levels with the levels from Quake Gold or Quake Platinum.

Important Note

We will instruct users where to download everything except the Quake Gold and Quake Platinum files themselves. Unfortunately, these games were never released in the US, and are not available for sale in stores or any digital download platforms. We encourage players to find a legal way to acquire the files from Quake Gold or Quake Platinum (the games are often available on eBay or other used game outlets online). We do not condone piracy in any form.

What You'll Need

We'll walk you through how to get most of these items in the sections below, but for those interested in skipping the prose, here are the files you'll need:

The PAK0.PAK and PAK1.PAK files from either Quake Gold or Quake Platinum.

If you're already familiar with modding Quake, install Quake and apply the above patches and additions to it in the order we've listed them. For everyone else, more detailed instructions follow in the sections below.

Setup Instructions

Follow each of these steps in order, and you should be up and running in no time.

Step 1: Install Quake

This step should be obvious, but you need to have the original Quake game installed on your PC before you'll be able to follow any of the other steps.

The part which might not be obvious is that this guide assumes you're using the Steam version of Quake. If you're using the disc version of Quake, or have acquired it from somewhere else, then these instructions will need to be modified as they will likely not work for you as listed.

Once you install Quake, locate your game directory. The folder will usually be inside your main Steam folder, under SteamApps\common\Quake. If you are on a 64-bit Windows machine, and you installed Quake to the default directory, then it will most likely be located at C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Quake.

From now on, when we refer to the game folder or the Quake folder, this is the directory to which we mean.

If you've modded your Quake installation in the past, you might wish to either verify the files through Steam or simply uninstall and reinstall the game on Steam to force a clean installation of all the core game files and clean up anything extra which could interfere with the following steps.

Step 2: Install the Quake Ultimate Patch

The latest Quake Ultimate Patch at the time of this writing is version 1.11. It is available for download from this ModDB page.

Once downloaded, just double-click the .exe to start the installer. Make sure your game folder is the one listed when the installer starts, and then merely click Install.

Once the installer completes, you can move on to the next step.

Step 3: Install the DarkPlaces Engine

The Quake Ultimate Patch includes a slightly older version of the DarkPlaces engine. To make sure you're running the most recent release with all the latest fixes and enhancements, we recommend installing the latest DarkPlaces engine and mod over the top of the Quake Ultimate Patch.

Download one of those versions (or a more recent version if available). Once downloaded, extract all of the contents of the zip file into your Quake game directory. You should now have a darkplaces.exe file within your Quake folder, and if you were to run it now, it should work.

There are two more steps to take to make the engine work more smoothly with Steam:

Rename Winquake.exe to Winquake.exe.bak.

Make a copy of darkplaces.exe and name it Winquake.exe.

These last steps will mean you can launch the game as you normally would through Steam.

Step 4: Install Rygel's Ultra Textures

Rygel's ultra textures are much larger than the original Quake game textures, and vastly enhance the game's appearance on modern PCs.

If you have over 1 GB of video memory, we recommend getting the full 2.7 GB pack from the DarkPlaces download page. If you have less than 1 GB of video memory, it is recommended to download and install the 900 MB high res texture pack from the same page instead.

In either case, move the downloaded file into the Id1 folder in your game directory.

Step 5: Install Romi's Rtlights File

When using the Realtime World Lighting option in the DarkPlaces engine, using a replacement rtlights file can significantly boost performance.

You'll need 7zip (or a zip tool which supports 7zip files) to extract the downloaded files from the archive.

Unzip the downloaded file to a temporary folder on your computer. Once extracted, head into the QR_QuakeBestiary_[resolution]\For Darkplaces\id1 folder. Copy both folders here (progs and scripts) into the Id1 folder in your game directory.

Step 7: Replace PAK0.PAK and PAK1.PAK

The final step is to back up and replace the default game's PAK1.PAK and PAK2.PAK files inside the Id1 folder in your game directory with the ones included with either Quake Gold or Quake Platinum.

First, simply rename PAK1.PAK to PAK1.PAK.bak and PAK2.PAK to PAK2.PAK.bak. Next, copy your chosen PAK files into the Id1 folder where you just renamed the others.

As an extra step, we recommend that you make a copy of the PAK files you've chosen to use and keep them in the Id1 folder next to the originals, with an extension such as PAK0.PAK.gold and PAK1.PAK.gold. This way, if Steam ever overwrites your custom files with the originals, you can simply copy them back into place again from these extra backups.

You can also use the same tip to keep both Gold and Platinum editions of the PAK files handy, and just copy whichever one you choose in place of the original filenames when you wish to switch between them.

Pro Tip

Another way to keep all 3 versions of the game available (the original 1996 version, as well as Gold and Platinum) is to copy your entire Id1 folder and name it after the version you're installing, such as Gold. Then you can permanently leave the Gold edition PAK files in place in that directory, and let Steam maintain the original files in the original directory.

By adding a launch argument to the game through Steam (such as " -game Gold"), you can auto-launch the version of your choice when running the game. You may also load a different version of the game from within the console while running the game. Check out the DarkPlaces documentation for more details about these options.

Play the Game!

That's it! You should now be ready to launch Quake from Steam (or by running Winquake.exe) and play through the Quake Gold or Quake Platinum experience with the latest game patches and visuals available.

This guide was created by Ben McClure of Game Completionist with assistance from KValda in the Steam community. You can find KValda's original Russian language guide here.